


i'm keeping quite 'til there's no more sirens

by endru



Series: it's all i know and i can hardly speak [1]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Hopeful Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor references to bad coping skills and general panicking, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Slash, Selectively Mute Crowley, gratuitous use of footnotes, ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2020-04-13
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:26:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23624578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/endru/pseuds/endru
Summary: Crowley asked questions, and then he Fell. And if that was the punishment for a first offence, he hated his ability to imagine what the next would be.Crowley never lost the wonder. Crowley never stopped questioning.Crowley did, however, stop asking.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: it's all i know and i can hardly speak [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1700566
Comments: 5
Kudos: 55





	i'm keeping quite 'til there's no more sirens

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally posted about a month ago on a different account. I stopped writing fic when I started college and only recently restarted now that I'm graduating. As I got back into it, I decided I wanted to distance myself from things I did in high school without orphaning everything entirely.
> 
> If you've read this before, that's why. I've deleted the original.

  1. before



Before She gave Them curiosity, it was his and his alone. She gave him a blank canvas and he grew the same universe They have been discovering for millennia. She built Them in her image, they say, but She had the image before Them. She tested the qualities that now make humanity what it is in her firstborn children. She gave them the capacity for love and rage and hurt and to Crowley, to Crowley only, though he wouldn’t be Crowley for an indeterminable period of time to come, She gave inquiry.

She gave it to him. And when he used it, Her precious gift, She threw him away.

Crowley asked questions and She never answered. Crowley asked questions and someone took them as inspiration. Crowley asked questions because he knew, for so long, only two things (if you can even separate them): wonder and the stars.

And then, they Fell. He stood at the edge of the universe, Her universe, _his_ universe. Spinning light into fantastical, beautiful nebulas only he could design, the only other being with the capacity to create instead of simply executing. He stood at the edge of his universe, perfectly and endlessly content with his stars and his unanswered questions, as a war raged on just outside his peripherals.

And then, he Fell.

He wasn’t even fighting.

When he says, desperate and terrified, some six thousand years later, “All I ever did was ask questions,” it’s literal.

Crowley asked questions. He put them out into the world, and when they went sour, when they barreled out of his control, he did not get to take them back.

Crowley asked questions, and then he Fell. And if that was the punishment for a first offence, he hated his ability to imagine what the next would be.

Crowley never lost the wonder. Crowley never stopped questioning.

Crowley did, however, stop asking.

//

There exists, if you believe in the possibility of an endless series of realities[[1]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23624578#_ftn1) where much is the same but it is also not, a world where Crowley funnels unbearable shame into burning fury, and not the other way around. In that world, he walks the Earth with a sharp tongue and finds absolute joy in using it for an almost unbelievable amount of snarking.

In this one, Crowley’s quick wit is locked behind a cage of bone-deep, six-thousand-year-old terror.

In all of them, Crowley is curious and creative and an absolute bastard, speaking be damned[[2]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23624578#_ftn2).

  1. during



Crowley never, technically, _stopped_ speaking. No one saw the dramatic shift[[3]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23624578#_ftn3) from constant and mostly inane chattering to absolute silence. Crawly, Serpent of Eden, the hailed Creator of Sin[[4]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23624578#_ftn4), tight-lipped and angry was just another demon.

As one final blessing, or a part of damnation, no one ever thought to question it[[5]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23624578#_ftn5), the Fallen could not remember each other. Their time in Heaven was torn apart and crafted back into nothing a name and a job and the feeling of Her love. The time After began with the excruciating loss of it all. Without a use for the slice of identity they _could_ remember, most of them let it drift away until they barely even knew there was a Before[[6]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23624578#_ftn6). All the original facts, their status[[7]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23624578#_ftn7), abilities, behaviors, quirks, demeanor, were rendered meaningless. No one knew enough to realize he had changed so drastically.

The demons always take Crowley’s seemingly unbreakable silence as indifference, intimidation, deference. A line of best fit, connecting the situation, his attitude and their needs to make sense of something they would never understand[[8]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23624578#_ftn8).

Aziraphale, the first and last good thing Crowley has ever come close to having, didn’t know any better, either. Crowley has long learned not to presume his thoughts and feelings, but Aziraphale has said enough for him to safely assume that Aziraphale is no closer to the truth than anyone else. Aziraphale, at the least, thinks him to be no more than a snake that’s a little too out of place in his mostly-human body to properly work the vocals.

Aziraphale, whether he knows (or believes) it, is the only being to have heard Crowley’s voice directly since it led to his Fall. He’d said, somewhere, sometime, in that brief and blissful period coming in the days after the one where the world, incredibly, did not end. He’d said, to Aziraphale, that he was just enough of a bastard to be the only one worth talking to[[9]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23624578#_ftn9).

He’d said it, after pouring over the thought for hundreds of years.

That’s the thing, the part that gets lost in translation. It’s not that Crowley _doesn’t_ speak. He doesn’t speak _often_. And, after what happened, he sure as _shit_ doesn’t speak without thinking. And thinking. And thinking.

Always, always, _always_ thinking.

Each and every word that Crowley has ever spoken to Aziraphale, a couple hundred worth, if you bothered to count them all up, was chosen with the most careful consideration, conducted over an embarrassingly long period of time. How many years passed after Aziraphale made a vague, off-hand comment in an otherwise innocuous stream of consciousness that he had found sushi to be quite enjoyable before Crowley even mentioned the word, hoping for Aziraphale to take the bait[[10]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23624578#_ftn10) and accompany him to an equally carefully chosen restaurant[[11]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23624578#_ftn11)?

It is an arduous process, forming a sentence. It begins, as most things do, with a Thought. A particular thought, one which does not go easily when dismissed. Once a Thought has stayed sufficiently long enough to be acknowledged, Crowley begins the next step: envisioning every possible outcome of sharing said thought. If the majority of outcomes are favorable enough, and none of the potential consequences are too painful, it continues to step three. In step three, Crowley convinces himself that the desired outcome is truly pleasurable enough to be worth step four. If step four is reached, as it so rarely is, Crowley begins to draft. The final must be as succinct as logically possible. This takes anywhere from several days to several decades, depending on the stakes. After step four, naturally, comes step five: practicing. First mouthing along to the words, memorizing the shape of them, smoothing out the hard edge of fear. Then, saying them, once, experimentally. In a quiet place, safe as Crowley ever feels, putting them out into the world, just to check if it might come crashing down around him. He’ll give it a few days, maybe a week or two, to be sure there isn’t some slow-burn plot coming together to ruin him. When the world, invariably, does _not_ end, Crowley engages in a bit more practice, out loud, crafting a careful, even tone of vague disinterest. He practices until he is ready, sure that the frantic energy and soft, terribly bright spot of hope he always feels in the moments before he really does speak will be perfectly in check. Then, when a moment arises, veritable eons away from the Thought, Crowley will, as he is known to do every hundred or so years, speak.

If Aziraphale notices the way terror seizes him back up into relatively constant silence right after, well, he’s always been far too kind to bring it up.

//

Aziraphale knows Crowley _can_ talk. He also knows that Crowley does it so, so very rarely. He, after some thousand years, will also know that Crowley, for all he does talk, never, _never_ , asks a question[[12]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23624578#_ftn12).

Aziraphale, as familiar with the Serpent of Eden as he is with Crawly the Demon and Crowley: Technically Still A Demon but mostly A Mild Annoyance[[13]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23624578#_ftn13), took a long time to catch on.

He didn’t know enough about demons, as a collective, to notice Crowley’s reticence being a rare trait. He’d met so few others, there was no way to know how obnoxiously chatty they tended to be[[14]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23624578#_ftn14).

When Crowley did speak, as infrequent as it came, Aziraphale took the raspy, stilted tone at face value. Crowley, a serpent through and through, half-snake even as he stood on two legs. His voice, the complexity of it each time he forced half a sentence around his forked tongue and hidden fangs, must have been, simply, a consequence of his duality.

Particularly when his interaction with Crowley was limited to passing half-arguments and intentionally quiet company every several hundred years, Aziraphale had no reason to be suspicious of - to even contemplate - Crowley’s exceptionally silent nature. Aziraphale did not think deeply about the lack of verbal communication and would be shocked if he stopped long enough to realize the number of times he’s actually _heard_ Crowley’s voice. However, even in his blissful ignorance, Aziraphale had always treasured every word.

For six thousand years, Aziraphale knew Crowley. For more of them than he could admit, Aziraphale loved Crowley. For six thousand years, Aziraphale talked and Crowley didn’t. And, for six thousand years, it never occurred to Aziraphale that it may have been for a _reason_.

3\. after

Crowley paces. This is not strange. Crowley is in a constant state of motion, hands always gesturing in aborted movements, crossing and uncrossing his legs when he’s forced to sit upright. Re-contorting his body in shapes that Aziraphale has never been able to see the comfort in when he’s sprawled happily across the bookshop.

The pacing, as a concept, is not strange. The way that Crowley is doing it, this time, _is_.

It’s an elliptical path, staggered and stuttering and too fast. He doesn’t have his sunglasses on, based on an unspoken agreement with a number of complicated caveats that Aziraphale doesn’t always know ahead of time, but Aziraphale watches him reach for them in his pocket. He doesn’t know if he stops because they aren’t actually there, or if he simply cannot make up his mind. Whatever the reason, it only amplifies the uncomfortable nervous energy. Aziraphale, too empathetic by nature and specially attuned to Crowley, starts to feel suffocated by it.

“Crowley, my dear,” he begins, softly, after five or so minutes of watching Crowley. He’s started tugging on the hair just above his ears, “is there something bothering you?”

It’s a stupid thing to ask, the answer obviously being an emphatic _yes_ , _badly_ , but Aziraphale means it more as gentle prompt towards honesty rather than genuine inquiry.

It’s a stupid thing to ask, not because the answer is obviously and emphatically _yes_ , _badly_ , but because it causes Crowley to freeze, so entirely Aziraphale wonders if he’s stopped time altogether. He moves only to jerk his head to face Aziraphale, looking at him but not, stricken. Aziraphale has seen that troubled shine to his eyes so many times before, but he’s never been this unsure about why it is there.

Like talking to a frightened dog, Aziraphale continues, lowly, slowly and over-enunciating, “Dear… if you need something, anything… please ask me.”

And there it was.

Crowley, his corporation, turns impossibly pale. From frozen, he begins to tremble, little minute shakes that Aziraphale wouldn’t have seen if not so singularly focused on Crowley’s every movement. There is an indescribable _pain_ , dawning across his features like a sunrise. Aziraphale, in a desperate effort to comfort, has said precisely and absolutely the wrong thing. Crowley looks _crushed_ , nervous to wrecked in seconds flat. Aziraphale has spent six thousand years learning to read into Crowley’s purposeful silence, to see the intentions hidden between what little he says, to hear over his grandiose body-language. Crowley overcompensates like he _invented_ it, and Aziraphale has always been uniquely able to split the difference.

Not now. Aziraphale sees the complex depth of emotions, all of them unpleasant: desperation, betrayal, terror. He knows _exactly_ how Crowley feels, in that moment, but he doesn’t have a single _fucking_ idea _why_.

Aziraphale doesn’t know how long passes. Crowley stares, not really making eye-contact. He’s looking just over Aziraphale’s shoulder, faking it. He stares, he shakes. His breathing is deep and heavy, no matter that he doesn’t need air. His throat visibly constricts. It’s like he’s choking, but there’s not a sound.

When Crowley speaks, this time, Aziraphale hears the uncomfortable rasp of it, the painful stagger in the syllables, and he does not blame it on serpentine nature. Aziraphale finally recognizes it for what it is: it’s a magnitude away but still just the same as when someone speaks seconds after waking. Aziraphale hears, in awful recognition, the results of disuse. Crowley speaks, two simple and desperate words that cut Aziraphale in a way that feels quite a lot like discorporation, “I can’t.”

Aziraphale, finally, with perfect clarity, sees what he’s been missing all along.

//

Crowley thinks the conversation might take a few thousand more years to finish.

Aziraphale, the literal angel, was blessed with a kind of unshakable patience that Crowley has never known[[15]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23624578#_ftn15).

It started with a broken, strangled “I can’t.” Crowley pushed the words out with all his energy and fell to his knees for the effort.

Aziraphale, maybe out of kindness or maybe just uncertainty, dared not move while Crowley sucked in deep and useless breaths, hands scrabbling to hold onto something, anything, on the smooth ground.

Time, as it exists now, has still never quite flowed right for them[[16]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23624578#_ftn16). Not to say it stops, not unless _someone_ desperately hopes it to, but the feeling of it isn’t the same. Seconds pass to minutes to hours and, in the grand scheme of life, this is so miniscule neither of them truly notice.

Crowley has never been able to go through his process particularly quickly - and he’s never been in a situation where it’s been quite so necessary[[17]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23624578#_ftn17) \- but he’s started and stopped this conversation more times than he can count. The words, ironically, to tell Aziraphale how _difficult_ he finds it just to speak, have bubbled up to the surface so often. Especially now, when Crowley spends nearly every waking moment in whisper distance of the angel. Tucked up in the bookshop, basking in the warm, pleasant quiet that doesn’t hurt the way it normally does. At Aziraphale’s side, following him through London, to the park, to the Ritz, to the end of the world[[18]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23624578#_ftn18). So many things to say, all of them seeming so simple, were they not so tightly trapped under trauma and habit. To tell Aziraphale that he _didn’t_ _want any of this_. That _falling never stopped hurting, even after I hit the ground._ That he’s scared, he’s _terrified_. To say _please, please_ and _I’m sorry, I’m so sorry_.

To say, _I love you, I love you, I have loved you for as long as I’ve known you and the words have been stuck behind my ribcage this whole time because what if I tell you and my whole world ends again, I wouldn’t survive this time, I couldn’t, I couldn’t, I wouldn’t want to._

He can feel them, stuck there at the base of his throat. He can taste them on his tongue. They sit, just out of reach. On the other side of a line he’s forgotten how to cross.

It takes minutes, it takes hours, it takes days, maybe it takes years. It takes forever and no time at all. It is far too soon and almost too late.

Crowley has six halves of a Thought and no way to gauge the stakes. Crowley can’t fathom the desired outcome and couldn’t bear to venture a consequence. All his drafts run together until he can’t even tell what they’re trying to say. He gets no time to practice. He is filled with frantic energy and the barest blink of hope. Crowley, shaking with fear and clawing the hardwood floor with blunt nails, voice trembling, low and scratchy, with absolutely certainty that his world is going to break, unfixable, into pieces the moment he finishes, says, “All I did,” he pauses unwittingly, to drag in a gasping breath and squeeze his eyes shut even tighter, “All I ever did, was _ask questions_.”

This is, by no means, enough information to explain _anything_ to _anyone_ , but, this is not just anything and Aziraphale is not just anyone. Aziraphale, lets out a whoosh of air, a quiet, “ _oh_ ,” that is wrapped so tightly in recognition and understanding and regret and shame that it’s almost impressive.

  1. the beginning



Careful hands cup wet cheeks. A voice, so warm, so inviting, full of tender love and care, whispers, “Oh, oh, my dear. My precious, lovely boy. Our side, remember?”

There is the most tangible air of pride, when Aziraphale says, “ _You_ said it, remember? _Our side_.”

Crowley swallows around nothing and everything all at once.

“My dear, there’s no one to punish you anymore.”

Crowley, finally, _finally_ , meets his eyes, blank in a way that would be concerning if it wasn’t such a pleasant break from all the pain. He doesn’t quite speak, unsurprisingly, but he makes a soft, unmistakably questioning noise.

“ _Crowley_ ,” Aziraphale says, desperate this time, “You can ask. You can ask me anything. _I am not going to punish you_.”

The dam doesn’t break.

Crowley doesn’t spill, he doesn’t suddenly unleash all those millions of words he’s been so carefully holding back, and he sure as hell doesn’t _ask_ any _questions_.

But, there is a wash of relief across his face and every tensed muscle releases in the same moment.

But, Crowley reaches forward and grabs two painfully tight handfuls of Aziraphale’s sweater, pulling him just a centimeter closer, as close to a request as he’s ever gotten before.

Six thousand years of all-consuming dread cannot be overcome so easily.

But, Crowley begins healing.

* * *

[[1]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23624578#_ftnref1) You may think this is an unlikely belief, given the general climate around the intersections of science and religion these days. However, if She imagined up Heaven and Hell and Humanity and all that, and kept them carefully separated with so few exceptions, none of them accidental, who’s to say She has not done this a thousand times over, each hidden from the rest. A thousand rough drafts, perhaps, before one succeeds.

[[2]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23624578#_ftnref2) Crowley also means this literally.

[[3]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23624578#_ftnref3) Read: Fall

[[4]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23624578#_ftnref4) Crowley, even After, would still be the only one with an original _God Damned_ thought.

[[5]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23624578#_ftnref5) See: 4.

[[6]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23624578#_ftnref6) Crowley, for reasons he will never know - and never ask for - remembers more than just a title. He remembers a twisting column of light, weaving itself through his fingers and wrapping in loose spirals up to his shoulders. Crowley can still, if he focuses, feel the heat in his hands where he _built the fucking stars_. He sees them, right where he left them, and knows so intimately that he put them there. With all the unbearable pain it brings, Crowley wouldn’t let the memory go for anything. 

[[7]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23624578#_ftnref7) Angels do not consider status the same way humans do. “Birth order” is probably a better term.

[[8]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23624578#_ftnref8) This seems to be another thing She gave to all Her creations: the incessant need to make sense of all things. Humanity had Science and Fate. Angels, Aziraphale unfortunately included, had The Great Plan. Demons had War. Crowley was still looking for something to make it all click into place.

[[9]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23624578#_ftnref9) Again, Crowley means this literally.

[[10]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23624578#_ftnref10) Aziraphale did.

[[11]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23624578#_ftnref11) Crowley knows _exactly_ how many years, and he will not disclose such information, even under threat of permanent death.

[[12]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23624578#_ftnref12) On the increasingly rare occasion that Aziraphale could not be corralled by the rise of an eyebrow or the set of Crowley’s mouth or the gentle touch of four fingers to the patches at his elbows, Crowley would, after a period of complicated silence that went mostly unnoticed, bite out a bland statement. A quiet, “I have a car.” A tired, “Sushi isn’t the worst.” Quick, succinct, seemingly meaningless facts that Aziraphale would take for the offers they are.

[[13]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23624578#_ftnref13) Aziraphale would maintain this, if asked, for years past when it stopped being true.

[[14]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23624578#_ftnref14) The popular cinematic trope of giving Villains long monologues, exposing their backstory and Devious Plans in equal measures was, in fact, based on passing experiences with the demon Hastur on the occasions he visited humanity. The tendency of this lengthy drivel allowing the hero to thwart the Villain before they could execute such plans was not entirely made up, either.

[[15]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23624578#_ftnref15) She hadn’t quite thought of that one, with his lot. Just look at Gabriel and Michael.

[[16]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23624578#_ftnref16) Time, actually, has always flowed in the exact same manner as it does around humanity. They simply hadn’t been counting, before. Humans, all on their own, invented the arbitrary systems they constrain themselves by. Daylight savings, however, _was_ one of Crowley’s.

[[17]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23624578#_ftnref17) Sure, there were plenty of timely jokes Crowley missed out on making, but, at least with Aziraphale, the right quirk of his eyebrow just over the top ridge of his sunglasses was, more often than not, quite enough to make the point.

[[18]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23624578#_ftnref18) People really need to learn that Crowley is always speaking literally.

**Author's Note:**

> tbh this is mostly a self-indulgent projection of my own issues onto Crowley but let's be real: dude has some real traumatic experiences and undoubtedly bad coping mechanisms.
> 
> fic title is from spinning by jack's mannequin, series title is from i can hardly speak by bombaby bicycle club.


End file.
